Plan Board again votes to lift St. Francis House meal limit

Thursday

Seeing little positive impact that the meal limit on soup kitchens has had downtown, the Gainesville City Plan Board voted again Thursday to recommend removing the limit.

Seeing little, if any, positive impact that the city's meal limit on soup kitchens has had downtown, the City Plan Board voted Thursday to recommend removing the limit — again.

In 2009, the Plan Board, a group of unelected residents that advises the Gainesville City Commission on planning issues, recommended the 130-meals-per-day limit be lifted after hearing a petition to relax the meal limit on holidays. In turn, the City Commission then voted to lift the limit on three holidays, leaving it in place for the other 362 days of the year.

The petition before members Thursday, though, offered a compromise: restricting meal service to a daily three-hour window.

“By doing that, you're going to have small groups of people that will be in there at one time,” said Kent Vann, the executive director of the St. Francis House, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen on South Main Street and the only facility that falls under the meal limit.

Currently, St. Francis House serves one meal a day — lunch — beginning at 10:30 a.m. If the commission approves the petition and the soup kitchen is granted a new special-use permit under the amended ordinance, Vann plans to begin serving at 10:30 a.m. and stopping at 1:30 p.m.

Vann filed the petition, which has support from the city's planning manager, Ralph Hilliard, in hopes of being able to serve more people in a time of increasing need. Vann told Plan Board members there are between 75 and 100 people per day who aren't getting fed because of the current ordinance.

Even with the Plan Board's unanimous support, the matter in the coming months will go to elected city commissioners, who have to contend with the reality of political pressure on top of the balancing act of feeding the homeless and hungry and keeping downtown orderly for residents and shopkeepers.

“I think it's an uphill battle from here,” said Al Cockrell, the chairman of St. Francis House's board of directors. “We have much, much, much work to do.”

Vann said he intends to show commissioners how St. Francis House's modified management plan to ensure clients behave on site and off — parts of which are in place now — is improving the quality of life in the neighborhood.

Of the 16 citizens who spoke during Thursday's meeting, one was against the petition. But Cockrell knows there are influential people who didn't show up but remain opposed. And he knows that the City Commission knows that, too.

At City Hall, Pat Fitzpatrick, an outspoken advocate for the homeless, was passing out copies of an email that Nathan Collier, whose company owns several apartment complexes around the city, sent to commissioners asking them to keep the limit.

“As a downtown property owner, the vagrants are a ... constant negative impact. The cumulative effect of a rampant occupying army of vagrants is extremely discouraging,” Collier wrote to commissioners last year. Earlier this month, he sent a similar email asking, “Why must the vagrants take over one of the very best locations the City has to offer?”

Dan Harmeling, the only citizen who spoke against the petition Thursday, said that two decades ago, commissioners promised that east Gainesville and downtown “would be promoted.”

“For 20 years, these promises have been kept and, as a result, our downtown people have responded with millions of dollars invested in their homes and their businesses.”

It could be a month or longer before the petition is heard by city commissioners, and it's unclear how they will vote.

Commissioner Randy Wells was a member of the Plan Board in 2009 when it unanimously recommended the commission lift the limit altogether.

Logistically, Hilliard, board members and proponents of the petition agreed that the time-limit approach would do more to break up the concentration of people that now flocks to St. Francis House to line up before 10:30 a.m. — the goal being to be among the first 130 in line.

“This 130 limit was a stupid idea,” said Bob Freeman, who with his wife, Arupa, runs a mobile outreach service to help the homeless. “It's always been a stupid idea. It doesn't work. It's caused worse problems downtown than solved. It's given the town a horrible reputation as a bunch of uncaring, awful people.”

Contact Chad Smith at 338-3104 or chad.smith@gvillesun.com.

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